1. What is Love?
A Conceptual Analysis of "Love", focusing on the
Love Theories of Plato, St. Augustine and Freud
Nico Nuyens
GRIPh Working Papers No. 0901
This paper can be downloaded without charge from the GRIPh Working Paper Series
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2. What is love?
A Conceptual Analysis of “Love”, focusing on the Love Theories of
Plato, St. Augustine and Freud
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................. 1
1. FORMAL ANALYSIS OF LOVE............................................................................... 3
2. SEMANTIC ANALYSIS OF LOVE........................................................................... 6
3. HISTORICAL ANALYSIS OF LOVE....................................................................... 9
3.1 ANCIENT GREEK PHILOSOPHY: PLATO ..................................................................... 11
3.2 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY: SAINT AUGUSTINE............................................................ 18
3.3 MODERN PHILOSOPHY: FREUD ................................................................................. 27
4. COMPARATIVE EVALUATION............................................................................ 37
CONCLUSIONS ............................................................................................................. 40
REFERENCES................................................................................................................ 43

3. Introduction
The starting point of this paper is the question: “What is love?”, or, in other words, how
can we understand or even define the concept of love? To clarify this question we have to
approach the problem systematically. Love is no natural kind, nor is it a substance of an
abstract kind. It seems to be an empirical phenomenon, since we encounter it almost
every day. It is, however, not an empirical concept in the sense that we can empirically
decide whether something is love or not. In everyday situations we use “love” in a great
variety of meanings, but still, and maybe exactly because of that, we are not quite able to
say what it exactly means. We say for instance: 1) “Romeo loves Juliet”; 2) “Odysseus
loves Penelope”; 3) “Abraham loves his son Isaak”; 4) “Humbert loves Lolita”; 5) “Epi-
curus loves champagne and caviar”; 6) “Boudewijn Büch loves books”; 7) “William Wal-
lace loves Scotland”; 8) “Jesus loves you”; 9) “This chemical loves water”; and finally 10)
“Socrates loves wisdom”.
In all these sentences, the sense in which “love” is used differs. Romeo’s love for
Juliet is highly romantic, whereas Odysseus’ love for Penelope is an instance of matri-
monial love, in which honour and obligation towards the spouse is prominent. Some
other examples prove to be even more distinct from love as we would normally under-
stand it. Loving your wife, for instance, means something quite different from loving
your books, for whereas the former is love for a person, the latter relates to a set of non-
personal objects. But still, both occasions can be, arguably, interpreted as something like
“the desire to be with it and care for it”, if we accept this as a provisional and rather intui-
tive definition of love. For a true bibliophile it is not unusual to have a deep emotional
relationship with his or her books. And this feeling can become so strong that the love for
other things – including relations to human loved ones – is neglected. In some cases, hu-
man loved ones may even become jealous of the other object of love. It may sound, of
course, a bit odd to be jealous with a book, but such reactions do have their plausibility
when we realize that true bibliophiles often pay more attention to books than to human
loved ones. Obviously, what we perceive as the object of love may differ greatly. Even
when individual persons, such as spouses, family members and (girl/boy) friends are ad-
mittedly the first that come to mind if we think about the meaning of love, this does not
necessarily mean that non-living things or activities, such as a country, a God or some
1

4. abstract value or entity, cannot be loved. It, hence, turns out that almost anything can be-
come an object of love. But what about the other way around: Can we say that everything
is capable of loving? This seems not to be the case, since, normally, we consider only
humans, and perhaps also some higher animals to have that ability. From a biological
perspective the love of God for human beings and vice versa may be a difficult case since
the existence of a supreme being capable of loving falls outside the scope of the modern
scientific worldview. For our purposes, however, which are philosophical, it should not
be a problem to deal with the love of an individual for God in the sense of a personified
abstract entity. Moreover, as we shall see later on in this paper, the love of God and
God’s love for his creation has actually been an important subject of study for many cen-
turies and, hence, needs to be taken very seriously.
When looking at the great variety of meanings in which “love” is used, it becomes
clear that it is a very broad concept. If we want to get a full understanding of the scope
and possible meanings of love, the following research questions require an answer.
1. What is the formal structure of love?
2. What sorts of things can love and what sorts can be loved?
3. What are the ‘causes’ and ‘effects’ of love?
4. What is the relation between sexual and non-sexual love?
5. What is the relation between love and philosophy?
6. What do we mean by “true love”?
In Chapter 1 I start the analysis of the formal structure of the concept of love, since this
counts as an important preliminary for further investigation. The second question, con-
cerning what sorts of things can love and what sorts can be loved, that is, the semantic
analysis of the concept, is dealt with in Chapter 2. For the remaining four research ques-
tions I have chosen the strategy of providing a historical analysis, which reconstructs
three attempts to explicate the concepts of love by three established experts on this issue:
Plato (Section 3.1), St. Augustine (Section 3.2) and Freud (Section 3.3)1. Of course, many
1
Scholz 1929 distinguishes merely the first two concepts of love as „die beiden größten Gestalten der
Liebe auf dem Boden des Abendlandes“, but he is in a way excused for this, since he wrote this work as
2

5. other philosophers have expressed themselves on the topic of love, but since I have to
limit the scope of this paper and think it is better to make a selection of the most impor-
tant and influential ideas on this topic, I shall confine myself to these three authors. They
represent, in a way, the different worldviews in which the various concepts of love are
embedded. Plato represents the ancient Greek worldview, Saint Augustine stands for the
Christian worldview, and Freud is characteristic of the modern scientific approach to
sexuality and love. I am aware of the fact that in this way I generalise greatly, but con-
sider this to be necessary as I feel that the most important concepts are sufficiently dealt
with.2 My strategy is to focus on the concept of love expressed by each author with the
intention of formalising their views in a form that allows them to be compared with each
other. In Chapter 4 the three concepts of love are evaluated in the context of the research
questions as mentioned above.
1. Formal analysis of love
In this chapter the mere logical form of the concept of love is considered, without looking
at its possible semantic content. In order to determine these formal characteristics the
verb of the substantiated form should be taken, for it appears that the noun “love” is a de-
rivative form of the verb “loves”. This becomes obvious if we look at the sentences men-
tioned in the Introduction. Love here operates syntactically as a verb3, which indicates
that “love” is not a substance or a natural kind, but a logical relation. The next step is to
determine, with the help of practical examples, how many and which aspects or variables
are possible and necessary in this relation, which is expressed in syntactically and seman-
tically sound sentences expressing love. It then turns out quickly that love is a relational
concept in which two aspects are involved: the lover and the loved one, or to put it differ-
early as 1929, and hence could not have been fully aware of the later importance of Freud’s work. Morgan
1964 and Santas 1988 on the other hand do recognize the significance of Freud as a major theorist of love.
2
Helmut Kuhn gave in his work Liebe: Geschichte eines Begriffs (1975) a very helpful overview of the
different concepts of love throughout the history of philosophy. Unfortunately he did not include Freud’s
theory in his analysis.
3
One obvious exception is the expression: „is in love with“, which designates the strong and sometimes
suddenly occuring feeling of being in love. Essentially, that is, formally, there is no difference in logical
structure between „is in love with“ and „loves“.
3

6. ently, the amans and the amandum.4 The correctness of this statement is easily shown,
since if the verb „to love“ occurs with only one variable, it will prove to be not informa-
tive, as in the phrase „John loves“5 we feel that something is missing. To know that “John
loves” is not enough; we want to know what he loves. Even if one is to claim that such a
sentence is syntactically and semantically possible, it must be admitted that obviously
some information is missing or left implicit: namely the object of John’s love. This object
of love need not be a concrete physical or even ontological object, distinct from the per-
son who loves. If we say that John loves himself, this is a perfectly well formed and
meaningful sentence, which allows for one physical object to be both the epistemological
subject and epistemological object of love. Self-love is, thus, a relation between the self
as a subject and the self as an object. What I want to make clear with this example is that
if we take as a starting point syntactically sound sentences that express a love relation, we
find that there always must be a grammatical subject as well as an object. Of course, love
relations are not just sentences, they are statements about reality, but for some kinds of
love no fitting physical object can be found. Therefore, when I speak of the “subject of
love” and the “object of love”, I refer to the epistemological meaning of that term, and
not to the grammatical or ontological meaning. In the table below an overview of the
various types of meaning is given.
Type of meaning The subject variable (amans) The object variable (amandum)
Grammatical meaning the grammatical subject the grammatical object
Epistemological meaning the epistemological subject the epistemological object
Ontological meaning the lover, i.e. Romeo the beloved, i.e. Juliet
In all concepts of love there is someone or something that loves, and someone or some-
thing that is being loved. This leads to the statement that there are two necessary and suf-
4
See also Kuhn, p. 10 who says that „Vielerlei wird Liebe genannt. Aber immer benennt das Wort eine
Beziehung zwischen mindestens zwei Partnern, einem Liebenden und einem Geliebten.“ Kuhn states that
„at least“ two partners are required, so that also love between three or more people can be accounted for.
What I am talking about, however, are no concrete physical objects of love, but rather conceptual. The ob-
jects Kuhn is referring to are no conceptual aspects, but ontological objects.
5
Or, alternatively, “John is being loved”.
4

7. ficient aspects in a love-relation. Even when A loves both B and C, this is not a three-
sided relation, but two two-sided relations; namely that A loves B and A loves C. This
two-sided relation is technically referred to as a dyadic relation.6 This insight is signifi-
cant for the formal analysis, since the logic of dyadic relations admits of three logical
characteristics: symmetry, transitivity, and reflexivity. With respect to ‘symmetry’, dy-
adic relations can be symmetrical, asymmetrical or non-symmetrical. A symmetrical rela-
tion is a relation such that if one thing has that relation to a second, then the second must
have that relation to the first. An asymmetrical relation on the other hand, says that the
second cannot have that relation to the first. Non-symmetrical relations finally, are de-
fined as such that they are neither symmetrical nor asymmetrical. Now, in the case of a
specific love relation, such as between Romeo and Juliet, it may well be that the relation
is symmetrical (this would mean that their love is reciprocal), but if we purely look at the
formal structure of the love relation itself, we see that it can only be a non-symmetrical
relation, since it is possible, but not necessary that the object of love returns this love to
the subject.7 The characteristic of ‘transitivity’ means for dyadic relations that they can be
either transitive or intransitive or non-transitive.8 A transitive relation is a relation such
that if one thing has it to a second, and the second has it to the third, then the first must
have it to the third. For an intransitive relation this cannot be the case, and non-transitive
relations are neither intransitive nor transitive. Again, in particular for love relations it
might be possible that they are transitive (in the case that Socrates loves Alcibiades, Al-
cibiades loves Agathon, and Socrates for this reason loves Agathon as well), but this is
certainly not logically necessary. So formally, love relations are non-transitive. The third
and last characteristic of dyadic relations is ‘reflexivity’. This means that any relation of
this kind is either reflexive, irreflexive or nonreflexive. For reflexive relations it goes that
A not only loves B, but A also loves A, i.e., itself. Irreflexive relations exclude this pos-
siblity, whereas non-reflexive relations are neither reflexive, nor irreflexive. According to
Copi “loves” is an example of such a non-reflexive relation, since although it is possible,
6
Copi, Irving, Symbolic Locic, Fourth Edition. New York: 1973 (first edition: 1954), The Macmillan Com-
pany, p 130.
7
Copi, p. 131. In Goethe’s Das Leiden des Jungen Werthers, for instance, was Werther’s love for Lotte
(tragically) not returned by her. The notion that true love can only exist if the two aspects (the subject and
the object) of a love relation love each other equally is interesting, but seems not to be necessary to fulfill
the logical criteria of the relation of love.
5

8. it is not necessary that the subject of love loves itself as well as the object.9 So to sum up,
the following characteristics of the formal structure of love can be given:
1. Love is a dyadic relation,
2. which has two necessary and sufficient epistemological variables, and which is
3. non-symmetrical,
4. non-transitive, and
5. non-reflexive.
These characteristics provide the logical framework for the semantic analysis of the con-
cept, which I shall discuss now.
2. Semantic analysis of love
Following the formal analysis, the next step is to determine the possible semantic content
of the two aspects of love: the amans and the amandum. That is, we should try to answer
the question, what sorts of things can love and what sorts of things can be loved? First,
we must ask ourselves what kind of entities they are. There are, in my view, three main
categories of entities: ontic, epistemic and semeiotic entities,10 which could constitute the
semantic content of either the amans or the amandum. With respect to the amans we can
say that for instance, in German, the verb loves to be at the end of long and complicated
sentences. But, obviously „love“ is here only used in a metaphorical sense, that is, the
verb does not literally “loves” to be at the end of sentences. What the speaker wants to
express is that there is this linguistic phenomenon in the German language that verbs tend
to occur at the end of sentence, thereby making it difficult for beginners in German to
grasp long sentences in one time. Similarly, with respect to epistemic entities, we can say
that a sentence like „the idea that I will fail my exam tomorrow loves to occupy my
8
Copi, p. 131.
9
Copi, p. 130-132 specifically mentions “love” as an example for non-symmetric, non-transitive and non-
reflexive relations.
10
Ontic entities are things that exist in space and time, and can be considered to be material, such as a cat
or a table. Epistemic entities on the other hand have no such physical extension, but are indirectly existen-
tially dependent on a material brain to think them. All concepts, thoughts, ideas, mental representations and
6

9. mind“ is metaphorical, for we would translate it as something like „I am very occupied
with the idea that I will fail my exam tomorrow“. Neither words nor ideas are able to as-
sume the place of the subject variable in a love relation. So only the category of ontic en-
tities remains as a candidate to be a lover. However, we generally think that not all mate-
rial things are capable of loving. According to the common sense view, the amans must
be a sentient living organism11, such as a human or some kind of animal. Plants and inor-
ganic things, however, are usually not considered to be capable of loving. Again, the oc-
currence of sentences like “this plant loves to be watered” and “that plant loves the sun”
prima facie seem to prove the opposite, but what is really meant here is that, generally,
plants cannot survive without some periodic quantity of water and sunshine.12 In order to
create some preliminary structure in the overwhelmingly broad concept of love I propose
the schema in Figure 1, by using semantic criteria for the subject and object variable of
love. This model is not to be taken as the only possible one, nor as reflecting a monolithic
reality, but as a heuristic proposal making further investigation easier.
1 Absolute love
2a Proper love 2b Metaphorical
love
3a Human love 3b Divine and
cosmic love
4a Inter-human 4b object love
love
5a Sexual love 5b Non-sexual
love
Figure 1: A model for distinguishing different conceptions of love.
emotions can be subsumed under this category, such as the idea of a cat or the thought of a table. Semeiotic
entities are ontic expressions of epistemic or ontic entities, such as the words „cat“ and „table“.
11
See also Santas, p. 4, who says: “there is minimal agreement, I think, that lovers are sentient beings, ca-
pable of some perception or thought and feeling. Animals, humans and divine beings can fall under this
characterization, but there is disagreement whether divine beings can love, and whether al non-human ani-
mals can be lovers.”
12
Similarly we say of certain chemicals that they are hydrophile (water loving) for the reason that they are
attracted to water or mix well with it. In the same way the Greek philosopher Heracleitus once
aphoristically said that „nature loves to hide“ (McKirahan, p. 14).
7

10. I start with the very broad notion of “absolute love” (concept 1), which includes all non-
symmetrical, non-transitive and non-reflexive dyadic relations, of which the epistemo-
logical subject loves the object. For each following phase a semantic criterion is added,
which distinguishes between instances of love that meet the criterion and those that do
not. The first distinction is drawn between love relations of which the subject of love is
restricted to persons (concept 2a), which may be called “proper love”, and those which
are not (concept 2b). The latter category applies to the love relations already mentioned
above, and which can be called “non-proper” or “metaphorical love”. The chemical for
instance does not ‘really’ love the water, but is “attracted” to it in a purely physical sense.
So being a lover in the proper sense seems only possible for sentient living organisms,
which we consider to be persons.13 But this concept still includes many things, since per-
sons are not necessarily identical with humans. A divine being might be said to be capa-
ble of love as well as some animal, if we anthropomorphically regard it to be a person.
But also the possibility for “machine love” must be kept open since we cannot exclude
that some day artificial intelligence may become so advanced that we may call it an intel-
ligent life form that is capable of love.14 To exclude these categories of love, we apply the
criterion that the subject of love is restricted to humans (concept 3a). Human love now
excludes instances of non-human love, such as divine and cosmic love, animal love and
machine love (concept 3b). One may justifiably object that the limitation of the subject of
love to persons and even to humans is arbitrary, since the formal essence of love only in-
cludes the relation between a subject and an object. Strictly speaking this is true: there is
no good reason to exclude non-persons or non-humans from love.
The point is, however, that all identified problems of love are related to human
love (concept 3a). Further, only the research question concerning the relation between
love and philosophy applies to a concept of love that is not inter-human or “object love”
(concept 4b), since the object of love is not another human but an epistemic, semeiotic, or
non-human ontic entity. All other forms of love are inter-human love (concept 4a). This
13
See also Kuhn, p 11: „Der Liebende – um zuerst von ihm zu sprechen – muss jedenfalls ein lebendiges
wesen sein. Liebe als Beziehung ist eine Lebensbeziehung – nur lebendiges kann lieben“.
14
In his book De ijzeren wil (The Iron Will), Bas Haring claims that machines can have emotions, and are
capable of loving. He notes: „…we must conclude that it is possible for machines to have emotions. Real
emotions. In any case just as real as our emotions. Machines can really love the sun, and be afraid of
death“ (Haring, p. 122).
8

11. former type of love includes the love for abstract and material entities, such as a man’s
love for wisdom, books, or his country. The final distinction can be made between human
love that we perceive to be erotic or sexual in nature, and love that is not. This is of
course highly problematic, because it is exactly the point that is hard to determine, what
is meant by “sexual” and what is not. As we shall see, the three authors that will be dis-
cussed in the following chapters all account for “inter-human love” differently, so this
interpretation should only be taken as an informal and intuitive distinction.15 The main
focus of concept explication should be on the kind of love relation between two human
beings, since most research questions are related to inter-human love. This focus, how-
ever, must not be too exclusive since we do not want to rule out the possibility of a hu-
man having a non-human object or even a personal God as an object of love.
3. Historical analysis of love
One of the first accounts of love we find in stories on cosmogony of Greek literature and
philosophy. Love here is a power to unite.16 It finds its expression in ancient poems of
heroic and tragic events, and was later used in philosophy as a cosmological principle to
explain what holds the world together, and why it falls apart when love is missing. The
tragic but necessary relation between love and strife is one of the most fundamental mo-
tives of nearly all ancient literature. According to the Greek poet, Hesiod, everything
started when Chaos and Earth mated. Their first offspring is Eros: the most beautiful of
all immortal Gods.17 For Hesiod love is not only erotic love (érōs), that is, a blind force
that suddenly and violently disturbs the ordered life, but also philótēs, the affinity with
relatives and friends, which is imperative for a well ordered life. This double nature of
love would later on in ancient philosophy be an important subject of thought. Érōs and
philía (or philótēs) are in a way opposite, but at the same time both undisputed instances
15
See also Santas, p. 9, who distinguishes three basic concepts of love, which are philia, agape and Eros.
Philia includes familial love (parental love, filial love and sibling love) as well as friendship. Agape (Chris-
tian love) includes the love of God for his “children”, the love of man for God, and the love of man for
neighbor. Eros is the sexual love between male and female, male and male, or between female and female.
16
Kuhn, p 30.
17
Kuhn, p. 34.
9

12. of love.18 The philosophy of Empedocles included a cosmogonic theory in which philótēs
is the uniting force, which holds all things together, including the human body.19
In Plato’s days, the common word for love was Eros. It meant, generally, “need”
or “desire,” a reaching out for whatever one lacked. Originally and characteristically, a
man felt Eros toward another human being in the sense of sexual desire. As the term
broadened, a man could be said to erei money or music or sculpture or poetry; toward
whatever he yearned for, he felt Eros. In addition, especially in later Hellenistic times a
man could broadly and generally be said to agapei anything towards which he felt Eros;
the words were not sharply distinguished, except that the noun for love was almost al-
ways Eros, while the verb could be either eran or agapan. Insofar as the verbs were dif-
ferentiated at all, a man might incline to save agapan for the love of an object he es-
teemed while he might confess Eros for an unworthy object, he would hardly say that he
“agaped” it. More specifically (and still speaking of the days before Jesus of Nazareth) a
man could feel friendship for and love his friends with the verb philein and the noun
philia. When those friends were his brothers or when he thought of them as brothers, he
could speak of his fraternal love for them as philos-delphos or phila-delphia. Philia was
affectionate and warm, but hardly ever sexual, as was usually, but not always Eros. God’s
love toward man was later to be called philanthropy.20 Several antecedent authors used
the concept of love as a motivational force to explain human and divine action or as a
cosmic force to explain the genesis of the cosmos and the human species. But the leap
forward did not occur until Plato, as he was the first to systematically investigate the na-
ture of human love. It is also no exaggeration to say that every later theorist of love, and
18
Kuhn, p. 36.
19
For Empedocles nature consists of four indestructible elements, which are earth, water, air and fire.
Everything in the universe is composed of these parts in a certain proportion and some day they will
decompose again so that only the elements remain. Two cosmic forces are responsible for the composition
and decomposition of the elements: love (Philótēs, Philía, Aphrodítē) and strife or hate (Neikós). Aphrodite
is the Goddess of love and therefore a common metaphor for the concept of love. The same goes for Eros,
who is both the God of (erotic) love and desire. It is not exactly clear how we must interpret them: as
purely physical forces of attraction and repulsion, which could be either innate in the elements or imposed
on them as external forces, or as intelligent divinities that act in purposive ways in creation and destruction.
In the first case it would be an instance of thing love (concept 2b), in the second it would be a case of non-
human personal love (concept 3b). What is clear is that both forces are engaged in an eternal battle for
domination of the cosmos and that they each prevail in turn in an endless cosmic cycle (Kirk, Raven,
Schofield, p. 327)
20
See also Morgan, p. 65.
10

13. particularly Augustine and Freud, has been in Plato’s debt, as we will see later on in this
paper.
3.1 Ancient Greek philosophy: Plato
Plato’s theory of love can be found in two of his works: the Phaidros and the Symposium.
In this paper I focus on the latter, since it supplies the most detailed information for our
analysis. The Symposium is arguably one of the most enjoyable Platonic dialogues to read.
Its literary form is a polylogue and its dramatic setting a drinking party, where each of the
guests is asked to give a speech in which Eros21, the god of sexual love is praised.22 The
first five speeches function as an introduction to the main theory of Eros, which is ex-
pressed in the sixth speech held by Socrates himself. Of the introductory speeches, the
speeches of Pausanias and Aristophanes are particularly worth mentioning. In Pausanias’
speech a distinction is made between two kinds of Eros: Eros Pándemos and Eros
Uraníos. Of Eros Pándemos he says that it is only felt by the vulgar (men), who are at-
tracted to women no less than to boys and who are more interested in the body than in the
soul. Naturally, people who love in this way seek for the least intelligent partners, since
all they care about is completing the sexual act, regardless of whether what they do is
honourable of not. This Eros Pándemos is mythologically related to a young goddess,
Pandemos, who is the daughter of Zeus and Dione, and for this reason she learned to love
both males and females. She is also referred to as “common Aphrodite”, for being more
oriented to the flesh.23 The Eros Uraníos relates to an older deity Urania, who is the
motherless daughter of Uranus, god of heaven. This type of Eros is exclusively directed
at boys, since her descent is purely male, and is praised by Pausanias as “heavenly Aph-
rodite”. As Urania is older than Pandemos, her love is more mature and, being directed at
males, finds pleasure in “what is by nature stronger and more intelligent”.24 It must be
noted that the Eros Uraníos includes the practice of paiderastía, or pedophile behaviour.
21
In the original Greek version of the Symposium „Eros“ is consequently capitalized, since the God and the
kind of love which is usually thought to be sexual in nature are supposed to be identical.
22
There are six speeches of praise delivered in the Symposium, plus a seventh by an uninvited and very
drunk latecomer, the Athenian statesman and general Alcibiades. In chronological order the encomia are
expressed by Phaedrus [178a-180b], Pausanias [180c-185c], Eryximachus [185e-188e], Aristophanes
[189c-193d], Agathon [194e-197e], Socrates [199c-212c] and Alcibiades [215a-222c].
23
Symposium, 181b.
24
Symposium, 181c.
11

14. Something, which is believed to be rather common in Plato’s time, and to a certain extent,
morally accepted if the boy was not too young.25
The other speech, that of the great poet Aristophanes, tells the story of the origin
of man. In the beginning, he states, there were three kinds of human beings: male, female,
and androgynous beings (having both male and female sexual organs). The shape of each
of the human beings was completely spherical – having two pairs of arms and legs and
two faces on each side of the head. In addition, they had two sets of sexual organs. But
then, tragically, due to their terribly ambitious nature they disobeyed the gods and tried to
make an ascent to heaven so as to attack the gods. Zeus, confronted with this rebellion,
did not want to simply wipe them out as he had previously done with the Titans when
they rebelled; the worship and sacrifices he received from the humans were too valuable
for him. In order to stop their misconduct, but at the same time to allow them to survive,
Zeus cut each human being in two. In doing so, he not only reduced their strength, but
also increased their number, being even more profitable to him then before.26 But then,
another tragedy occurred: since the human’s natural form had been cut in two, each one
longed for the other half it had been separated from. On finding each other, they would
refuse to let go of the other half in an attempt to grow together again. This way they were
not able to take care of themselves, and finally died from starvation and self-neglect.
When Zeus saw that the humans were in danger of extinction he took pity on them and
decided to reverse their genitals, in order to make reproduction possible. Now they not
only were able to have children, but also to have the satisfaction of intercourse. The
moral of this story is that the cause of our desire to love someone is that we try to find the
‘other half’ of what used to be our original unity. And this intense yearning, which is sa-
lient in lovers, is not primarily the desire for sexual intercourse, but the desire to be re-
united with something that has been taken away from us by force and against our will.
This desire to be a whole again is what we call love.27 Moreover, this mythical account of
the origin of love between humans explains why sometimes people are attracted to indi-
viduals of the same gender. Obviously, in their original state they were part of one an-
25
See also: Bury, R., „Introduction“ (1909) in: The Symposium of Plato. Edited, with introduction, critical
notes and commentary by R.G. Bury, Litt.D. Cambridge: 1932, W. Heffner and Sons Ltd., p. xxvi.
26
Symposium, 189e-190d.
27
Symposium, 190e-193b.
12

15. drogynous being. Interestingly, this view not only claims that homosexuality is in accor-
dance with nature, but also implies that (male) homosexuality is actually of a higher kind
than heterosexual love.
This conclusion of Aristophanes’ speech is affirmed by the speech of Socrates,
which turns out to be a representation of a discourse he once had with his instructor in
matters of love, Diotima. This Diotima appears to be a very wise woman, who refutes
Socrates’ initial claim that love itself is a beautiful thing. According to her mythical ex-
planation, love is neither beautiful and good, nor ugly and bad, but something in be-
tween.28 And besides this, Eros is not a god, since being a godhead requires the posses-
sion of beauty, and that is exactly what Eros desires and lacks. Instead, he appears to be
an intermediary daimon between the immortal gods and mortal men. Moreover, Eros has
both a fertile and rich nature, and an impoverished one, due to his descent of Poros (liter-
ally: “plenty” or “resource”) and Penia (“poverty”). As he is intermediary between the
mortal and the immortal, Eros is intermediary between the wise and the unwise, which is,
according to Socrates, the equivalent of a wisdom-lover or philosopher. The vocabulay of
‘mortality’ and ‘immortality’, of ‘gods’ and ‘men’, may sound archaic and mythical to
our modern understanding, but if we translate them into philosophically more common
terms we find the purely logical result that love strictly speaking is not identical with the
amans nor with the amandum. Rather, love is the impelling relation between these two.
From Socrates’ preliminary discussion with Agathon 29 three characteristics of
love are identified: that (1) love is always intentional, that is: it always has an object; that
(2) love is always a lack, a need, a longing, a want, a desire of something, rather than the
possession of something;30 and that (3) love always seeks beauty and goodness.31 It must
be noted that these results match perfectly with our formal analysis in Chapter 1. Further
on in the speech Socrates establishes even more characteristics.32 For instance, that (4)
love itself is neither beautiful nor good, but “something in between”. Two additions must
be made here. First, that Eros is neither a god, nor a man, but a great daimon: an interme-
diary between the gods and man, and second that Eros “partakes” in the nature of both
28
Symposium, 201e.
29
Symposium, 199c-201d.
30
Symposium, 200e.
31
Symposium, 201a.
13

16. his parents, Poros (plenty) and Penia (poverty). With respect to knowledge, he is a wis-
dom lover or philosopher, which means that love and philosophy are recognised by Plato
as being essentially connected. Then, Socrates speaks of the effects, or the utility, of
Eros33 and claims that (5) love is the desire for the everlasting possession of the good,
which is connected with the fear of losing the object of love after it is gained. This ex-
plains why some lovers become jealous, for jealousy is the fear of losing the beloved in
the future. Also, Socrates states that (6) the method or mode of action of Eros is that it
procreates, both physical and psychical, the good in the beautiful. Two different forms of
procreation are distinguished: physical and psychical procreation. The physical procrea-
tion of babies is the nearest approach to immortality through offspring, but never reaches
total immortality, since all humans must die some day. Therefore, the psychical procrea-
tion of laws, inventions and noble deeds, is a much stronger and higher form of procrea-
tion, since its offspring is immortal. A consequence of this sixth characteristic is that
some forms of love are objectively better than others. Love for the body is vulgar,
whereas love for the soul is the highest love. It also includes the idea that homosexual
love for boys is a higher and purer love than heterosexual love for women, since the souls
of men are regarded as stronger and more intelligent. Moreover, this kind of love is obvi-
ously not interested in creating physical offspring. The final characteristic of love (7)
concerns the purpose of love. According to Plato, the purpose of love is to ascend from
bodily beauty to the love of soul beauty, and eventually to the Form of “the Beauty” itself.
This is a process, through which the soul has to pass, beginning with the physical love for
a body and thence proceeding toward the love for the soul, in which the form of the
beauty is recognized. At this highest stage of love, even individual souls become irrele-
vant and only the pure form of beauty itself is loved. This can be considered to be the
most important “moral” of the story of Socrates’ instructor Diotima. And she even guides
him further in the mysteries of Eros. There are men, she teaches, who are ‘pregnant’ in
the body only, and whose pursuit of the immortality we all seek takes the sole direction
of physical procreation. They leave behind only physical offspring, which may well out-
live them and in this sense enables the parents to “defeat” their own death. Other men,
32
Symposium, 201d-212c.
33
Symposium, 204d-212a.
14

17. however, are pregnant more in their minds than in their body. They too seek immortality,
yet immortality of a higher order. These are our creators, artists, statesmen, lawgivers,
and educators: those who are remembered for the children, not of their loins, but of their
brains and hearts. These are more fully men, for they have “embodied” virtues by ex-
pressing them. Nonetheless, the distinction Plato makes here between body and soul is
not as strict as it seems. The path to true love is a matter of a long process of education.
Of course the love of a beginner is honestly sexual: it is the beautiful body that attracts
him. However, this is only the first step. In time, the lover will understand that the beauty
of the body is related to the beauty of the soul. He then advances from physically beauti-
ful bodies, to morally beautiful actions and then to intellectually beautiful forms. This
hierarchy is what is conventionally referred to as Plato’s “Ladder of Love” or “scala
amoris”34, because the highest form of love cannot be reached without having initially
stepped on the first rung of the ladder, which is the physical attraction to a beautiful ob-
ject such as a beautiful body, or beautiful words and discourses.
With respect to this point, the historical interpretation of Plato’s concept of love
moved in two different directions: one (older) interpretation claims that Plato is an ascetic,
who categorically condemns sexuality and urges men to turn completely away from the
body and all earthly things in favour of the super-mundane forms. This is where the fa-
mous expression of “Platonic love” came from, by which is meant a purely non-sexual
love. A younger tradition of interpretation, however, focuses on the idea that the Sympo-
sium and the Phaedrus set on the continuity of love’s growth, and claims that Plato only
partially condemns sex. However, in neither interpretation sexuality is actually praised. In
the first, it is condemned outright; in the second, it is taken as a natural and healthy, al-
though tiny, first step in love.35
But let us now turn to the question of what actually happens to us when we love.
Can we say that love is an emotion? Plato would probably deny this. With Scholz36 I be-
lieve that he would rather call it a ‘state of mind’. Emotions have a more temporary and
34
Santas, p. 25, 41.
35
See also: Morgan, p. 35.
36
Scholz, p. 4 calls it a „Gemütsverfassung“; In his attempt to define the concepts of love for Plato and
Christianity Scholz uses three questions for a method: 1. what is it based on; 2. what it exists in; and 3. how
it is distributed between the sexes (the orgiginal says: „1. die Frage, worauf sie beruht; 2. die Frage, worin
sie besteht; 3. die Frage, wie sie sich auf die Geschlechter verteilt“ (Scholz, p. 48).
15

18. subjective nature, since they are not so much dependent on the outside world, but seem to
originate from the subject itself. Love, however, is a state of mind that needs a certain
form (eidos) of beauty as a necessary precondition, to which the lover is attracted. Every
time the lover recognizes this form, he will experience the desire to be near the object in
which it becomes manifest. So it is this pure form of beauty (and to a certain extent also
goodness) that is the actual cause of love: We love things that are beautiful and want to
procreate beautiful things in order to become immortal. Yet the philosophical question is,
of course, what precisely this “pure form of beauty” is. According to Plato, beauty is not
something that is “in the eye of the beholder”. On the contrary, it is something objec-
tively present in a concrete thing. As Plato calls it, the beauty of a person is ontologically
a quality of a concrete instantiation, which partakes (metexis) in the true and pure form of
beauty. So Plato’s concept of love is essentially connected with his theory of forms. A
pure form is, according to Plato, an unchanging, universal and eternal entity, which is
unique in its kind and ontologically prior to all existing things in the world of appear-
ances. Individual things have certain characteristics, because they ontologically partake in
several pure forms, such as whiteness, beauty and courage. In a way, the pure form of
beauty can be called the “archetype of beauty”, although this is not Plato’s own wording.
Further, love can only be perceived by intuition, and not by sensation, so this ex-
plains the intellectual character of the recognition of the pure form of beauty in a person.
Salient, from a feminist point of view, is that women are excluded from partaking in the
Form of beauty, because Plato considers them to be inferior to men. This is, of course, on
the one hand a remarkable point of view, also because Diotima was not the least attrac-
tive woman of her time. Plato never elaborated on the matter, possibly because the con-
tradiction never occurred to him.37 On the other hand, Plato’s idea of the inferiority of
women was not exceptional in ancient Greece. In his opinion, women are inferior, since
they lack sharpness of vision. And sharpness of vision (that is, sharpness of the „men-
tal“ eye) is a necessary precondition to recognize beauty in the first place. So if one can-
not recognize the beauty of someone, there is simply no attraction, and if one sees the
pure form of beauty in someone, it is necessary to love him madly.
37
Scholz, p. 12.
16

19. So to summarize, the most important results are that the explicandum of Plato’s
attempt to explicate love is the Greek term Eros. We also saw that an explication should
aim at inter-human love (concept 4a), since it is the love between human persons Plato is
interested in. Evident non-examples that have to be excluded are instances of non-person
or thing love (concept 2b), such as the love of a (hydrophilic) chemical for water, and to a
lesser extent non-human love (concept 3b) and abstract and material love (concept 4b).
Regarding the conditions of adequacy, it must be said that Plato’s concept of love is quite
narrow. It excludes instances of cosmological love and leaves no room for the love of
God for his creation. Moreover, the only objects of love Plato mentions are human beings.
Love for material objects, such as books, is not mentioned. He does give an explanation
of the love for wisdom, as philosophy, but intrinsically connects it to the love of another
human soul, which is needed to “give birth” to this beautiful knowledge. An aspect that
may face the scepticism of feminists is the fact that for Plato the only true objects of love
are the souls of male individuals. The love for females is regarded as a matter of the flesh
only, since it is inherently connected with procreation of children. ‘True love’ seems,
therefore, only to be possible for homosexual (male) couples. This means that Plato’s
concept may be too narrow even to include our common view of women also being able
to love truly.
An evaluation of ‘general desiderata’ is concerned with giving a judgment on
three non-specific criteria: precision, fruitfulness and simplicity. With respect to the first
criterion we may note that Plato is remarkably precise in his explication of the concept of
Eros. He explains in detail that love is a relational entity, which involves a person who
loves and a person who is being loved. The lover feels a very strong desire to be with the
loved one due to the beauty he sees in him. The purpose of love is to procreate beautiful
children in the form of laws, inventions and noble deeds. Plato’s account of love proved
to be fruitful, in the sense that his theory was a great inspiration for later philosophers.
The question of whether Plato’s theory of love is simple, however, cannot be answered
with a clear “yes”. He does involve the metaphysical concept of beauty as an unchanging
“form”. In fact, this concept is essential to his whole theory. One may try to put into per-
spective this term by replacing it with a less objectionable term, such as “archetype of
beauty”, but that is not what Plato claims. He puts forward the strong claim stating that
17

20. these entities are absolute and that beauty is far from being “in the eye of the beholder”.
Plato’s concept of love cannot be separated from his metaphysical assumptions on the
existence of pure forms, and, therefore does satisfy the demand of simplicity.
3.2 Christian philosophy: Saint Augustine
The transgression from antique philosophy into Christian thought progresses slowly after
the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. In the first centuries AD many sects claim to
represent the true Christian belief on earth, and disagree on important dogmas, such as
the nature of God, the status of the Bible as divine revelation, and the immortality of the
soul. With Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430), many of the now typical Christian dog-
mas were established, the most important of which are the free will of human beings, the
trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and the theory of the fall of man, the inherited sins
and God’s grace. He counts arguably as the most influential Christian thinker ever, as he
wrote numerous works on philosophy and theology. The most important are De doctrina
christiana, the Confessiones, De trinitate, and De civitate Dei. One interesting character-
istic of the life of Augustine is that of extremes. As a youngster, Augustine leads a re-
markably unrestrained life, as we can read in the Confessiones.38 He steals, lies, leads a
promiscuous life and vainly strives for respect and wealth as a teacher of rhetoric.39 Only
after his conversion into Catholicism, he devotes himself to an ascetic life, and becomes
the humblest servant of God. A salient detail of his life story is that he relentlessly sends
away his wife and young child, because he thinks that a life devoted to God cannot be
combined with a normal family life.
Among the most important philosophical ideas of Augustine’s philosophy is the
existence of a personal and immaterial God, who consists of three substantially identical
persons: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. In contrast to later religious thinkers,
Augustine is not so much concerned with proving the existence of God by rational argu-
38
See also Flash, p. 12.
39
Well known are Augustine’s confessions of his escapades before his conversion. In his sixteenth year he
had longed to be sinning with “the boys”. He despised his mother Monnica’s warnings against sexual ir-
regularities – she urged him to at least avoid seducing married women – and felt ashamed at being less dis-
solute than his peers. At the famous pear-tree incident Augustine and his friends stole pears and threw them
to the pigs. According to his testimony, Augustine took them, precisely because he knew it was the wrong
thing to do.
18

21. ment, since for him this is evidently true.40 Compared to God’s superior intellectual pow-
ers the human mind is only a poor imitation. According to Augustine, human persons are
no actual composites of both body and soul, but rather the pure identity of the soul itself.
The body is merely a piece of “clothing” which covers the soul and cloaks its originally
clear view. The soul, however, is something purely immaterial and immortal.41 In the
context of the Biblical story of Adam and Eve, Augustine became concerned with sexual
differentiation. An important question was whether the difference between the sexes is
something that abides by the soul after death. If this is not the case, is then biological re-
production the only reason for the sexual difference of earthly bodies? Augustine thinks
that sexual difference might remain in some kind in heaven, but certainly no sexual acts
occur there, as some contemporaries suggested. In De bono coniugali (The Good of Mar-
riage), Augustine is still hesitant to admit that sexual intercourse took place in the Garden
of Eden, and in the Literal Commentary he is wondering whether the affection of caritas
alone would actually have been adequate for reproduction. It is not exaggerated to say
that Augustine never achieved a wholly satisfactory account of the role of sexuality
within marriage. It took him years to decide that Adam had an “animal”, and not a “spiri-
tual” body, and that in their unfallen state in paradise Adam and Eve did actually enjoy
sexual relations – albeit strictly for the procreation of children. And Augustine empha-
sizes here: sex, yes, but neither did they have it for the erotic pleasure, nor simply as an
expression of affection.42 Eventually, in De bono coniugali, Augustine comes to the con-
clusion that the only justification for sexual intercourse is the procreation of children. Sex
not aiming at making babies is a fault, though venial in a married couple.43
Augustine gives only one explicit definition of love. He says that love is “crav-
ing” (appetitus).44 All animals, including man, have these cravings, but when they occur
in man he calls them “affects” (affectus). Every affect is related to a definite object, and it
takes this object to spark the affection itself, thus providing an aim for it. Affection is de-
termined by the object it seeks analogously to a movement, which is set by the goal to-
40
There are a few proofs of Gods existence in Augustine’s works, but this is not his main interest. He is
much more interested in the nature and attributes of God (See also Rist, p. 67).
41
Rist, p. 92.
42
Rist, p. 112.
43
Kirwan, p. 194.
44
Arendt, p. 7.
19

22. ward which it moves. For, as Augustine writes, love is “a kind of motion and all motion
is toward something.” 45 What determines the motion is always something previously
given; we only love what we know. So in accordance with Plato, Augustine thinks that
we consider the object we know and desire to be “good” (bonum), otherwise we would
not seek it for its own sake. These “goods” are always independent objects, unrelated to
other objects. Again Plato resounds when Augustine says that we only desire what we do
not have. We desire it because we think the object is good and will make us happy. Once
we have our object, our desire ends, unless we are threatened with its loss. In that case the
desire to ‘have’ turns into a fear of losing. So as craving seeks some good, fear dreads
some ‘evil’ (malum). The consequence is that as long as we desire temporal things, we
are constantly under the threat of losing what we have gained. Constantly subjected to the
rule of craving and fear, the future is uncertain and we are unable to be happy. The true
life, Augustine therefore proposes, is “one that is both everlasting and happy”.46 His solu-
tion is to introduce a different object of love: namely, one that is no longer a particular
good, but the absolute or “highest” good itself (summum bonum). This absolute good
must be eternity, since eternity is not something you can lose against your will. A love
that seeks anything safe and disposable on earth is constantly frustrated, because every-
thing is doomed to perish in the long run. We must therefore make eternity the object of
our desire: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Love for things in the world he de-
nounces as cupiditas: the kind of love that pulls us ‘down’, due to its ‘weight’ on the
soul.47 The right love, in contrast, is the one that seeks eternity and the absolute future:
caritas, and is able to draw us in the opposite direction, namely up and out of our earthly
dungeons into the heavens. Still, both right and wrong love have in common that they are
craving desire, appetitus. The difference between the two kinds of love lies therefore
solely in the object of love. Hence, Augustine warns, “love, but be careful what you
love”.48
Thus, Augustine’s theory of love is part of a morally charged model of the right
life. According to this model, God is conceived as the summum bonum, and as the object
45
Arendt, p 9.
46
Arendt, p 10.
47
Rist, p 173.
48
Arendt, p 17.
20

23. all movements of love should be directed at. All ethical rules are derived from this object
of love. The ethical purpose is, for Augustine, to live life as a “wise man” (sapiens). This
means that to live rationally is to live a happy life and a life of “being with God”.49 So the
love for God is unmistakably of an intellectual nature. The purpose of man is to recognize
God, and for this purpose, the Christian virtues of faith (fides), hope (spes) and love (ca-
ritas) must be internalised, as they are thought to be a preparation of the soul to view the
light of God. To “view” God (visio Dei) means to intellectually grasp him, not to physi-
cally see him or to have a “vision” of God. Hence the love for God is an intellectual act
of the soul.50 From the perspective of Christian virtues, love is subsequently interpreted
as the desire to view God, hope as the expectation to achieve this and faith as the belief
that the object of the mental view corresponds with the way God truly is.
Several historically separated lines of thought come together in Augustine’s
works: one is the desire for deliverance and the other the desire for knowledge. The ques-
tioning of intellectual investigation (quaerere) was for Augustine essentially a quest for
God. This means that the true philosopher is at the same time a true god-loving person
(verus philosophus amator Dei).51 So philosophy as the “love of wisdom” was according
to Augustine identical with the intellectual love for God, and can be understood as a mov-
ing power that can ultimately unite us with God in perfect harmony. It is, however, char-
acteristic for the humans of the post-Adamitic age that their love is not originally intact.
Human love needs to be healed by the compassionate love of God. Three types of love
are distinguished in the works of Augustine, which differ from each other only in the di-
rection of the moving power of the love. They are 1) the love of God for his creation, and
in particular for humans, 2) the love of humans for God, and 3) the love of a man to his
fellow-men. The first love is descending, the second love is ascending, and in the third
kind of love both directions are combined. But still, in the combination of the two direc-
tions of love, the motivation of the descending love dominates, and the ascending move-
ment of the amor Dei is subordinated.52
49
Flasch, p. 128.
50
Flasch, p. 128.
51
De civ. Dei VIII, p. 1.
52
See also: Kuhn, p. 81.
21

24. Compared to the Platonic conception of love, this idea of a “descending love of
God for his creation” is a radically new concept. For the platonic thinker this would be a
very strange notion, because love for him is the desire for something, which is lacking.
Since God by definition is perfect and therefore lacks nothing, why should he want to
love something else? In Augustine’s theory of God this problem is never mentioned, and
obviously he did not think there is a contradiction here. Unlike cosmological love (con-
cept 2b), which is largely blind and serves as a pre-physical principle to explain the co-
herence of individual particulars, Augustine’s divine love is proper love (concept 2a).
God loves his creation as a father loves his children. Now, since all forms of human love
are derived from and subordinated to God’s love, this love has a special status. It is a
principle of nature that all love is aimed at the good, but humans also have the moral duty
to love the objects of their love in the same way as they are being loved by God. This
equally holds for man’s love for neighbour as his love for himself. In its true form love is
love for the good, such as justice. But love is always accompanied by knowledge, so no
true love is possible without knowledge of the “form” of the object. At the same time true
knowledge is not possible without love. This line of thought is clearly circular, but be-
comes understandable, when knowledge is subordinated under faith. Unfortunately the
clarity of knowledge and faith is obscured by the corruption of human nature, which
leads the human soul away from its true destination.53 Augustine’s theory of ‘love’ –
which for him is actually caritas or agape54 – is essentially connected with his doctrine of
divine grace. Due to the grace of God, men are free beings, and are able to choose
whether they return the love of God or not. The true object of love is always God, in fact,
God is love, and, therefore, he loves himself. This idea, in connection with the idea that
man is the image of God, constitutes the fundament of Augustine’s metaphysics of the
trinity. Of the three persons: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, the latter mediates
53
Kuhn, p. 90.
54
According to Hannah Arendt the three Greek terms of the Greek New Testament – Eros, storge and
agape – correspond with the Latin translations: amor, dilectio and caritas. She also says that Augustine
uses these terms rather flexible. Moreover, Augustine frequently uses them synonymously and even em-
phasizes this repeatedly. Still, he generally, but not consistently, uses amor to designate desire and craving
(that is, for love in its largest, least specific sense); dilectio to designate the love of self and neighbor; and
caritas to designate the love of God and the „highest good“ (Arendt, p. 38). Still, all three kinds of love are
instances of agape / caritas (see also Santas, p. 98).
22

25. between the Father and the Son, and functions as love (caritas). This involves both the
love of the Father for his Son as the love of the Son for his Father.
According to Augustine, the ascending love for God always has human persons as
a subject. Of all his creation, only humans have the innate capacity and desire towards
fulfilment, in the sense of becoming one with their creator. The typical characteristics of
man are furthermore that he is a thinking being, which has freedom of the will (liberum
arbitrium). From these characteristics two aspects of love can be distinguished: 1) the
questioning, searching and constantly distressed love (quaestio amoris) and 2) the or-
dered, but in its order threatened, love (ordo amoris).55 The quaestio amoris is an innate
desire for God, which is initially not recognized as such by the mortal individual. Usually
our view is too much obscured by earthly matters. The path towards God is something we
must find first, since we are largely ignorant of the true nature of this love. To seek the
love of God is not only the morally proper thing to do56, it is also the most natural and
necessary. The restlessness of our heart, which consists of a mixture of ignorance and
knowledge, drives us to our quest for divine love. As an ascending movement this quest
passes through three stages, which are the outer world here on earth, the inner world of
the soul, and finally the transcending of the world into the realm of the divine. In the first
stage, man seeks to find the object of love in nature: the earth, the sea, the air and fire, but
then realizes he can never find it here. In a second attempt, he turns to himself and starts
searching in his own soul (animus, memoria). But soon he must concede that love cannot
be found here either. The third way for man to search for love is to transcend his own in-
ternal life, for only “over me” (supra me) God can be found.57 But now the searching
man is captured by a difficulty, since it is unclear where he must look for his object of
love. It is not simply an “over” that can be determined in space. It is a completely differ-
ent realm, which cannot be grasped by our common understanding, but rather requires a
special insight. God is not “somewhere” to be found. He has not turned himself away
from man, but on the contrary, man has lost himself and with himself he has lost God. In
a decisive moment of reflection, man realizes that he is subjected to a world of temporal
55
Kuhn, p. 82.
56
“Thou shalt love the Lord, my God, with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind (Mat-
thew, 22:37)
57
Augustinus, Confessiones, I, 1.
23

26. variability, in which he is unable to grasp the highest truth. Only when he meditates on
the eternal realm of unchanging truth he is able to recognize this truth. Then, he perceives
the true divine beauty, similar to Plato’s intuition of the form, and finally understands his
originally existing relation to the object of love, which is God.58 Another aspect of as-
cending love is that it is an ordered love (amor ordinatus), since no ascending is possible
without a ladder on which to ascend on. This ladder is related to levels of being, such that
all human love is subordinated to the love of God. Human love, namely, is part of the
love for the outer world, which is lower than the love for the self (but still higher than the
love for material things, such as garments and riches). The love for the self, which is, ac-
cording to Augustine, the soul (anima), is in turn to be subordinated to the highest love,
which should be directed at God himself. According to this order of love, no human be-
ing should be loved in the same way as God is to be loved.59
The love of neighbour as a Christian commandment60 is derived from the love
(caritas) of God,61 which the believer embraces, as well as from the resulting new atti-
tude toward his own self. If man recognises himself as a part of God’s creation, not only
this God is loved, but man will also love himself as a part of the created nature, together
with the other created nature, for being related to the same origin. The love for the self
and for neighbour, therefore, goes hand in hand, since they are both, as humans, the im-
age of God. To be more precise, the love of neighbor is a form of affection or sentiment
(affectio) towards the other, which penetrates and shapes the natural love relations, such
as between friends, parents and children, brothers and sisters, and the citizens of a state or
nation.62 Through the love of neighbour, love of God can be expressed. It has a strong
moral bearing and is essentially connected with the agape of the New Testament.63 The
dilectio of the self and neighbour is, thus, a combination of an ascending and descending
love, which is not a direct love relation between two human persons, but an indirect one
through the love of God. At the same time the concepts of platonic love between friends
(philia) and desire or sexual attraction (eros) do not seem to be appropriate to cover the
58
Kuhn, p. 84.
59
Kuhn, p. 92.
60
“Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself“ (Leviticus, 19:18; Matthew, 22:39; and Mark, 12:31); .
61
See also: Arendt, p. 3; Kuhn, p. 86.
62
Kuhn, p. 86.
63
Kuhn, p. 87.
24

27. meaning of dilectio. Also cupiditas, as the love of things one can lose against one’s will,
is criticized by Augustine as more hostile to a ‘good will’ capable of freedom than any-
thing else. 64 In fact, cupiditas is nothing else than a desire (libido) for mortal things.
Freedom in this context means nothing else but self-sufficiency, which is reached only
through the love of God.
So to summarize, the explicandum of the Augustinian attempt to explicate love
was the Latin term caritas, which may be translated as divine love, i.e. the love of God
for his creation (concept 3b). He also speaks about cupiditas, which is the sexually moti-
vated love of an individual man for created objects in this world (concept 5a or 4b), but
rejects this notion for being “vulgar”. Inter-human love (concept 4a) is still possible, but
only when a detour is made over the love of God. For this reason individual creatures can
be loved indirectly only, and out of a moral obligation towards God.
Generally speaking, one can say that Augustine fails to develop a satisfying con-
cept of (romantic) love. He does make love the centre of his ethical theory, 65 which
seems to be a very high valuation, but emphasizes the epistemological character of love
too much. According to Augustine an object can only be fully known, when it is fully
loved.66 Love, then, is reduced to a form of knowledge, and appears to be too narrow to
cover instances of love we identified in the analysis of love. The special character of love
emotions, which phenomenologically strikes us as a strange and overwhelming force, is
not considered in its own right, but from an intellectual and ethical perspective only. Of
the sexual expression of human love Augustine speaks at best with disdain, but usually
with outright disgust. Obviously, his theory is more concentrated on how to control love
emotions than to explain their nature. Love between human persons is accepted, but only
when it is purely intellectual at a subordinated level under the love for God. Moreover,
Augustine’s love is something purely of the soul; the body only counts as a hindrance to
acquiring true love. On hearing the objection that if his theory were to be put into practice,
mankind would go extinct, Augustine cried out: “Oh, if only all men wanted this!”67 – a
statement that was as remarkable then as it is today. Another limitation of Augustine’s
64
Arendt, p. 20.
65
Flasch, p. 138.
66
See also Flasch, p. 135.
67
Flasch, p. 135.
25

28. concept of love is that only the love for God is a purpose in itself; all love for other peo-
ple – including the love for oneself – is only regarded as a means to this end. This view
entails not only that the meaning of human life and love is reduced to an instrument for
the higher purpose of the love for God, but also that it fails to recognise our common ex-
perience of other people as persons with an end in themselves and not as things only in-
strumental to God’s plan. So in making humans instruments of the love for God, a fun-
damental distance is created in the relation of man to others and to himself as a person.
We are only allowed to love people insofar as this love is related to the eternal grace of
God. The Augustinian concept of love has nothing to do with personal care or valuation
of persons. And that is part of what makes it so difficult to translate this concept into the
informal description. The common “desire” (appetitus) for something cannot count as
love, since it is not in any way related to the ascending nature of the love for God. In the
same way the love for a created thing for its own sake (cupiditas) is wrong. This means
that sexual love is simply disregarded as something vulgar and unworthy. It is completely
left out of the considerations of Augustine’s moral concept of love, and condemned as a
source of evil. This way he was insufficiently able to explicate the whole concept of love,
but rather focused on one and disqualified the other, thereby violating our common-sense
conception of sexual love as an evident example of love, no matter whether it is morally
good or bad. Nonetheless, Augustine’s theory about sexual, moral and Christian ethics
was extremely influential for more than one thousand years and for a large part still
dominates Western views on marriage, sexuality and homosexuality today.
As to the criterion of precision, we may say that Augustine does not pay much at-
tention to syntactic and semantic determinateness. Obviously, though implicitly, he iden-
tifies love as a dyadic relation, but does not emphasize the non-symmetrical, non-
transitive and non-reflexive character of love relations. On the contrary, Augustine thinks
that the right kind of love is necessarily transitory over the love of God. This means that
man is only able to love another mortal creature if he loves God first. So if a person A
loves God, and God loves person B, then person A must love person B. This is clearly at
odds with the formal characteristics established in Chapter 1. With respect to the criterion
of simplicity, the major role of Augustinian metaphysics and theology in his concept of
love should be addressed. If we are to accept Augustine’s explication, the notion of a the-
26

29. istic interpretation of God as the creator of heaven and earth, the initiator of miracles and
the final purpose of our very existence, must be accepted. Moreover, in this world view
are included the beliefs in an immortal soul and the primacy of the spiritual over the
physical.
3.3 Modern philosophy: Freud
The reason I chose Sigmund Freud as the third milestone in the history of the concept of
love is that he was a great innovator and a revolutionary in the study of love. Freud man-
aged to deliver a modern theory and method to interpret and analyze our most common
experiences with love. Moreover, he was the first one to approach the study of love scien-
tifically, to probe its mysteries and explain its irrationalities. Using his new theory of the
mind focusing on the psychosexual development of the child, and relying on data from
his patients revealed by the methods of psychoanalysis, he tried to locate the origins of
love in the early experiences of the individual.
Yet Freudian psychoanalysis is not a simple scientific claim. It is rather a laby-
rinth of mutually implicative insights. There is, however, a distinct metaphysical frame-
work in Freud’s thought, that seems to be a combination of modern scientific, and ancient
mythic elements. He conceived the world as a dynamic system of material mass-energy
units, which move and interact due to mechanical forces, so no teleology is involved in
Freud’s worldview.68 All desire and need pushes us in a certain direction, of which the
destination is unknown. The outcome of our actions is not consciously and carefully con-
sidered before we act, but undertaken action is the result of previously determined factors.
Freud’s initial model of the mind is mechanistic, but because of its limited possibilities
for explaining the internal dynamics of human personality, let alone of complex relations
among persons, he adopted the organism as his basic model. This model allows for de-
velopment, something which is typical for all life on this planet. Consequently, any bio-
logical or psychological explanation is typically genetic; to explain a man’s behaviour by
tracing it back to its roots. With respect to the so-called “mental” concepts Freud pre-
68
This, however, is Freud’s “official claim”. As Morgan points out, Freud felt compelled to talk in terms of
teleology again and again. Certainly when Freud is engaged in biological discussions, he finds it hard to
avoid a teleological way of thinking (Morgan, p. 170).
27

30. sumes that they can be translated into “physical” concepts. Thus, he thinks that somatic
characterizations are primary, while psychic ones are derivative and theoretically reduci-
ble to somatic disturbances in the bio-chemical household of the body. The challange was,
however, that Freud met patients whose physical findings were completely negative, yet
who suffered hysterical tics and coughs. He realized that these patients needed help,
without denying the ultimate importance of physiology. By using model-analogies, Freud
could help his patients to gain insight into the causes of their present psychological state,
and in some cases this relieved some intolerable symptoms. The language he uses is
hardly scientific. Concepts such as “instinct” (Trieb), “inhibition” (Hemmung), “ego”
(Ich) and “repression” (Verdrängung) cannot be translated into any equivalent anatomical
or physiological terms.69
Freud wanted to construct a unified concept of love, that is, a concept in which
familial love, friendship, sexual love and Christian love were all parts of the same
whole.70 The basis for such a concept was found in the idea of sexuality. Freud’s account
of love is fundamentally grounded in the idea that sexuality underlies all other expres-
sions of love. This notion can be referred to as the “sexual reduction”. Basically, this
means that the fundaments of love are deeply hidden in affections of much older sexual
impulses, which determine the love choices we make at puberty and adulthood. These
later love choices are modelled after these original sexual experiences in infancy and
childhood, usually within the family circle.
Freud’s theory of sexuality is most clearly expressed in the Three Essays on the
Theory of Sexuality (1905). In this work Freud tried to reconstruct the infantile factor in
human sexuality by analyzing sexual perversions, such as fetishism, homosexuality, sa-
dism and masochism. He starts with what he regarded as the dominant view of sexuality.
A view that he thought was full of errors and inaccuracies. According to this “popular
opinion”, the sexual instinct is “generally understood to be absent in childhood, to set in
at the time of puberty”. The supposed object of the sexual instinct is a “person of the op-
69
The common complaint is that Freud’s key terms are of a metaphysical nature and can never hope for
confirmation. At the same time no one can prove they are false because, however the facts turn out in a
given case, there is always a Freudian explanation.
70
See also Santas, p. 98.
28

31. posite sex” and the aim is “sexual union”.71 Freud decides to radically break with this tra-
dition. He begins his criticism by drawing a distinction between the object and the aim of
the sexual instinct. The sexual object is the concrete individual person, which is sexually
attractive to someone; the sexual aim (libido) is the act towards which the instinct tends.72
For Freud there is no innate connection between the sexual aim and any object. They are
merely “soldered together”. So, contrary to the “popular view”, Freud thinks that humans
desire to find an object that fits the sexual aim and, depending on the degree of corre-
spondence, is more or less suitable for sexual gratification.
During his study on sexual deviations with respect to the sexual aim, Freud no-
ticed that even in most “normal” sexual processes, other activities are also involved, such
as touching, kissing and looking. These activities are pleasurable in themselves and inten-
sify the excitation of the mere union of genitals. Under certain conditions these other ac-
tivities and areas of the body – the erogenous zones – can take over the main sexual aim
in so-called “perversions”. Perversions are sexual activities that either extend beyond the
genital regions, or linger the sexual union, the aim of which is, normally, intended to be
reached as soon as possible.73 Freud draws two major conclusions from his discussion of
the perversions. First of all, the sexual instinct has to struggle against certain mental
forces which act as resistances, such as cultural and ethical ideals, shame, and disgust.
This results in a ‘repression’ of the sexual aim.74 Second, the sexual aim is not a simple
“thing” but rather a composite of several elements, including, for instance, the touching
and kissing of, and looking at the different erogenous zones of the body. This points out a
second error in the “popular view” of sexuality, namely that the sexual instinct does not
have just one aim that “sexual” is not the same as “genital”.75 According to Freud, the
third error of the “popular view” of the sexual instinct is that it is supposed to be absent in
childhood, and first set in at the advent of puberty. Freud argued, on the contrary, that the
sexual manifestations at puberty are only the second phase in the development of the sex-
ual instinct. The first phase occurs already in infancy and childhood, followed by a period
of latency. In addition to this, the particular shape that sexual life takes at puberty and
71
Freud, Sigmund, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, SE: Volume VII, p. 135.
72
Freud, Sigmund, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, SE: Volume VII, p. 136.
73
Freud, Sigmund, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, SE: Volume VII, p. 150.
74
Freud, Sigmund, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, SE: Volume VII, p. 162.
29

32. beyond is determined largely by the particular forms of sexual manifestation in those ear-
lier years. Consequently, to understand the love life of adults we must trace back and
identify the main phases and forms of psychosexual development from infancy on.
A unique feature of the development of the sexual instinct is that it is “diphastic”,
it has two phases of development, interrupted by the period of latency. First there is the
period of infancy (1-3 years) and childhood (3-5 years), and second, after a period of la-
tency, puberty sets in.76 In the period of infancy there are two groups of instincts: those
that are directed at the preservation of his organism (ego-preservative instincts), and
those that will, after inevitably anxious transformations, become genitally sexual (‘anacli-
tic’ instincts). The former becomes manifest in the infant’s dependence on his mother for
nourishment. Sucking its mother’s breast is the infant’s first act of love. But the infant‘s
sexual needs demand gratification as well. Since no individual object of love is at hand,
the baby’s sexual needs are “leaned-against” his ego-preservative needs, and this is what
Freud calls “anaclitic” needs. These anaclitic needs are the genetic root for love. They are
not of a passionate-possessive nature, but rather affectionate and quiet-intimate. The baby
does not seek to overpower this nursing mother, but rather welcomes and responds to the
embracing comfort she offers.77
A closely linked phenomenon is what Freud calls “narcissism”. Here the motivat-
ing force of the ego-preservative instincts themselves is explained dynamically in terms
of a reflection of the anaclitic love for the mother towards the self (“the object I love is
good, therefore I am good”). What we call ‘adult love’ is always a function of these two
basic tendencies: taking one’s self as a love-object (narcissism) and attaching one’s self
(anaclitically) to another person, who is prototypically the mother.78 In this first phase of
development, the construction of the “self”79 or “ego” (Ich), is in full progress. Newly
born babies do not have an ego yet. It emerges as a result of certain situations later on, in
75
See also: Santas, p. 102.
76
Santas, p. 106.
77
Morgan, p. 138.
78
Morgan, p. 139.
79
In his Introduction to The Ego and the Id (1923), Freud sometimes uses „ego“ to refer to a person’s self
as a whole (the self concept) and sometimes to a particular part of the mind characterized by special attrib-
utes and functions (the agency concept) (see also: Meyer, J., and Bauer, B., „Ego Psychology“ in: Erwin,
Edward (ed.), The Freud Encyclopedia. Theory, Therapy and Culture. New York and London: 2002,
Routledge, p. 169).
30

33. which some mental conflict needs to be resolved. The ego then becomes the executive
organ of the mind. It negotiates the demands of the outside world as well as the demands
of the inside mental agencies: the “id” (Es) and the “superego” (Über-ich). Both the ego
and the id attempt to satisfy the individual’s needs, but their methods of going about are
radically different. The id insists on immediate gratification without regard to the conse-
quences or steps necessary to achieve it, whereas the ego’s task is to mediate in such mat-
ters in order to make the original wish or a substitute gratification possible. Similarly, the
superego insists on total and immediate compliance with its usually moral demands, and
it does so without regard to any mitigating circumstances and without concern about the
costs or the consequences of its requirements. The ego facilitates, transforms, or deflects
those demands. It does so by taking into account the very factors that the superego ig-
nores, and then balances and counterbalances the instincts using sublimation, neutraliza-
tion and drive-fusion.80
In the first phase of development there are several stages: the oral, the anal, the
phallic, and the genital. The phallic stage is the most important for Freud’s theory of love.
It is marked by the first “real” experience of love, but still shares the characteristics of
infantile sexuality, since it is dominated by a new erogenous zone: the genitals. Now the
Oedipus Complex becomes relevant. Essentially, it means that the child shows exclusive
attachment to the parent of the opposite sex, whilst jealousy and resentment for the parent
of the same sex, which is considered to be a rival. In addition, the behaviour of the child
toward his parents, or brothers and sisters, is unmistakably erotic or sexual. However, at a
certain point of psycho-sexual development, the “incest barrier” intervenes, which results
in psychical repression. This leads to the child’s withdrawing from its knowledge and
awareness of a part of its sexual aims: the sexual union with the parent of the opposite
sex. The sexual instinct becomes “inhibited” in its aim and turns into affectionate or ten-
der feelings. Later on, these feelings can become a component of “normal” love in the
sense that they are directed to new non-incestuous objects. At puberty, Freud says, the
sexual instinct develops into full strength, as the old familiar incestuous objects are taken
up again and fuelled with libido. Now the adolescent is subject to very intense emotional
80
See also: Lasky, R. „Ego“ in: Erwin, Edward (ed.), The Freud Encyclopedia. Theory, Therapy and Cul-
ture. New York and London: 2002, Routledge, p. 168.
31

34. processes, since he realizes that the parent of the opposite sex cannot serve as an object of
libido. Due to the intolerable content of the Oedipus complex, his anti-reaction remains
inhibited in the sub-consciousness. From this time onwards the human individual has to
detach himself from his parent, and redirect his libido to an outside love-object.81
As we have seen, the central thesis of Freud’s theory of love is that all love is
sexual in its origin. But this statement must be put into perspective. Love for Freud is not
simply identical with the desire for sexual intercourse. Psychoanalysis extended and
deepened our common understanding of sexuality, and placed love relationships within a
creative-sexual context of the libido. Freud says that all love “naturally consists in sexual
love with sexual union as its aim”.82 Love in its focal meaning is indeed sexual love (with
sexual union as its aim) but in its broader meaning it also refers to self-love, familial love,
friendship, charity, and love for non-human concrete or abstract things.83 Freud’s justifi-
cation of this claim lies in the fact that observation showed us that sexual impulses are
sometimes inhibited in their aim and are redirected toward a socially acceptable alterna-
tive.84 In the light of this explanation, it becomes clear why Freud’s claim should not be
seriously problematic. The word “sexuality” means for him nothing more than just the
very broad concept of love, which is not far removed from that of “desire”. Then, it be-
comes notably less shocking to say of an infant that it needs milk and desires its mother’s
presence, than to speak of a baby as sexual. But still, Freud meant quite clearly that in-
fants have desires out of which will develop their later, explicitly sexual desires, and that
the psychical problems they will later face, whether obviously sexual or not, will always
be traceable back to childhood states and events. Empirical proof for this thesis was
found in the omnipresent, but, due to an extraordinary feat of self-deception, ignored ex-
perience of babies exploring their genital organs with evident joy, and the fact that babies
love to look at naked people. Between the desires of children and their subsequent adult
81
Idem, p. 336.
82
Freud, Sigmund, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921), SE: Volume XVIII, p. 90.
83
See also: Santas, p. 117.
84
Freud literally says: “psycho-analytic research has taught us that all these tendencies are of the same in-
stinctual impulses; in relations between the sexes these impulses force their way towards sexual union, but
in other circumstances they are diverted from this aim or are prevented from reaching it, though always
preserving enough of their original nature to keep their identity recognisable (as in such features as the lon-
ging for proximity, and self-sacrifice“ (Freud, Sigmund, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego
(1921), SE: Volume XVIII, p. 91).
32

35. needs lie redirections and refocusing, but not sharp breaks. Apart from Freud’s claim that
love is sexual in its origin, two more claims are made concerning the concept of love.
First, that “language has carried out an entirely justifiable piece of unification in creating
the word “love” (Liebe) with its numerous uses, and that we cannot do better than take it
as the basis of our scientific discussions and expositions as well.”85 The piece of unifica-
tion that the German language carried out is paralleled in the English language. In both
languages the terms “Liebe” and “love” cover sexual love, as well as self-love, love for
parents and children, friendship, love for humanity in general, and love for concrete ob-
jects and abstract ideas. So psycho-analysis adopts this wide linguistic use and provides a
genetic explanation of it86. Second, Plato’s concept of Eros coincides in important re-
spects with the libido, the “love-force” of psychoanalysis.
Now I focus on the two main characteristics of love: the exclusive attachment
(Anhänglichkeit) and overvaluation (Überschätzung). These characteristics remain fairly
constant throughout Freud’s writings. By “exclusive attachment” Freud means a libidinal
object choice of a single object, usually a person, with a view to sexual gratification.87
What makes this attachment exclusive is that the amans is fully absorbed in the interests
of the amandum, and becomes jealous. What is important for us, however, is that this at-
tachment may be only “sensual”, or only “affectionate”, or both. Attachment, which is
only sensual, is nothing else than object-fixation on the part of the sexual instincts with a
view to direct sexual gratification. This fixation expires when its aim has been reached,
and this is what we call common, sexual love.88 But what happens very often is that a re-
vival of the expired need occurs, which forms a first motive to direct a lasting fixation on
the sexual object and for loving it in the passionless intervals as well. However, whether
lasting or not, this is only sensual or earthly love. When tender feelings of affection and
care are also attached to the same object, a full-blown case of being in love comes into
being. Freud calls this combination of both sensual and affectionate feelings “normal
love”.89 When, however, the two currents of feelings are not united on the same object
and the attachment is only on the tender and affectionate feelings, we have a case of love
85
Freud, Sigmund, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921), SE: Volume XVIII, pp 90-91.
86
See also: Santas, p 119.
87
Freud, Sigmund, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905), SE: Volume VII, p 199.
88
Freud, Sigmund, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921), SE: Volume XVIII, p 111.
33

36. referred to in art and literature. Freud calls this “heavenly love”.90 This kind of love is
also found in the case of psychically conditioned impotence that occurs in men, who
show a sentimental enthusiasm for women whom they deeply respect, but who do not
excite them to sexual activities. He will only be potent with other women whom he does
not love in this way and thinks little of or even despises. In such tragic cases, where sen-
sual and affectionate love does not coincide in the same object, true love cannot blossom.
To be in love with an adult initially means for a person to lose some of our narcissistic
self-regard and, consequently, to lower himself in his own estimation. This can be psy-
chologically justified by the hope of becoming an object of the love of another person,
through which our self-regard is restored. In genuinely happy adult love, as in the primal
state, object-libido and ego-libido coincide.91 The second characteristic of love is over-
valuation or overestimation (Überschätzung). Overvaluation consists in valuing the char-
acteristics of the loved object more than those of people who are not loved, or in valuing
them more than at a time when the object was not loved. It also results in an unusual cre-
dulity, as we view the amandum as an authority. This means that we blind ourselves to
the faults and weaknesses of the amandum, and idealise it, sometimes to a dangerous ex-
aggeration of reality.92
But now I come to discuss Freud’s account of a person’s object choice. Why do
we fall in love with certain people and not with others, which are equally or even more
beautiful and good? As we have seen in the discussion on Freud’s theory of sexuality, the
first choice of amandum occurs during the phallic stage when the child comes under the
Oedipus complex and is confronted with the incest barrier. Typically, the first love-object
of the child is the parent of the opposite sex or a parent substitute, such as a brother or
sister. The prohibition of such a love relationship results in the repression of the incestu-
ous sexual aims, which become inhibited. In puberty, however, the powerful current of
89
Idem, pp 112-113.
90
Freud, Sigmund, Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, Leonardo da Vinci and other Works (1910), SE:
Volume XI, p. 183; and Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921), SE: Volume XVIII, p. 112.
The parallels with the love theory in Plato’s Symposium, where Pausanias distinguishes between Eros
Pandemos and Eros Uranios are evident here, although Freud does not express this explicitly.
91
Freud, Sigmund, On Narcissism: An Introduction (1914), Standard Edition: Volume XIV, pp. 98-100.
92
Freud, Sigmund, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921), SE: Volume XVIII, p. 91, 113.
Freud also mentions several other features of love, such as ‘the longing for proximity and self-sacrifice’,
‘traits of humility, of the limitation of narcissism, and of self-injury’ which, he tells us, occur in every case
of being in love.
34

37. the libido can no longer be disguised, and must find a way in which it can be satisfied.
Due to the obstacle of the incest barrier, the new love-objects are chosen in the world
outside the close family. But, according to Freud, “these new objects are still chosen after
the pattern (image) of the infantile ones”.93 Thus, the new love-objects are, as Freud puts
it, ‘mother surrogates’ or ‘father surrogates’: they bear similarities to the actual father or
mother. These characteristics may be obvious physical ones, or role-similarities: the older,
caring type of woman or the father type of man who protects. Freud believes that for men
there are four conditions that characterize the choice of amandum: 1) Apart from the
amans and the amandum, there should be an injured third party; 2) the amandum should
be more or less sexually discredited and its fidelity and loyalty should admit of some
doubt. According to Freud, this condition could be called that of the “love for a harlot”94;
3) the amans passionately attaches itself time after time to different amanda of this ‘har-
lot’ type, without actually finding satisfaction that lasts; and 4) the amans is convinced
that the amandum actually needs the amans in order to be saved from a complete loss of
respectability and for a rapid and otherwise unavoidable sink to a deplorable level.95
These conditions make sense when viewed in the light of Freud’s Oedipus com-
plex. The “injured third party” here is none other than the father himself, which is seen as
a rival and must be overcome. The condition of the amandum being sexually discredited,
is less obvious, since the ‘loose’ character of the chosen playmate, seems to contradict
with the grown man’s conscious image of his mother as a personification of impeccable
moral purity: a kind of “Madonna”. But while in the conscious mind “Madonna” and
“harlot” are contraries, in the unconscious they are a united whole. According to Freud,
this phenomenon can be traced back to the child’s accidental witnessing of parental inter-
course, which is interpreted as an indulging in forbidden acts of the mother with another
man (the father). The high value placed on women of low character is unconsciously as-
sociated with this ‘infidelity’ of the mother, but consciously, the mother is still unique
and irreplaceable. Consequently, the satisfaction that is sought is never found in the end-
less series of love-affairs with “harlots”. Finally, the element of the “rescue” is also a de-
93
Freud, Sigmund, Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, Leonardo da Vinci and other Works (1910), SE:
Volume XI, p. 181.
94
Freud, Sigmund, A Special Type of Choice of Object Made by Men (1910), SE: Volume XI, p. 166.
95
Idem, p. 168.
35